When I was first learning to drive, I was out with my dad on a very quiet road and did this, thinking it was the windshield wipers. Opps. The car didn't flip, but I was only going about 10...and I was driving a big, old Buick wagon.

My suspicion comes from the road where this happened - a long, straight-ish away freeway. What luck, eh?

Check out this story in the Guardian:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/15/green-consumers-more-likely-steal

"Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours," they write.

Two things cause me to think all these acceleration accidents are really driver error:

I saw a demonstration (Popular Science website?) in which the driver floored the accelerator after the car got up to 50. Then he applied the brakes while keeping the accelerator floored. The car came to a stop. Lesson: The brakes are stronger than the engine.

I read recently that these events are heavily skewed to older drivers. How does the car know the age of the driver?

Original Mike said: "I read recently that these events are heavily skewed to older drivers."

Yep. I saw the graph published for that. Nice manipulation of numbers in Powerpointless format. If you add up the numbers for "Over 60" and then those for "under 60" you get equivalent totals.

For the other question by "Madison Man"...not the steering whell will not lock up if you shift to neutral, otherwise you'd not be able to shift from "Drive" to "Reverse" when parking either. Steering wheel lock is integrated with the "Park" transmission position.

I drove a Prius as a rental. Not bad. Roomy for a small car. I might get one just to have a small car for parking in the city when I go and to save on gasoline and the big truck for heading to the wilds (and Lowe's).

The story Martha cites: basically, it suggests through experimentation that people treat environmental do-gooderism as church indulgences, and they trea indulgences as a license to go ahead and behave immorally in some other arena.

Hope they find it soon...because the hybrids and full elecic cars require a "drive by wire" throttle...literally a potentiometer (linear rheostat) in the pedal mechansim to manage the power to the drive motors.

A manual kill switch of some type, for the battery bank, is absolutely necesary. Even modern electic forklifts have them.

That said, I repeat, having the same "drive by wire" thing for the gasoline or diesel models is just nuts. Just as any interlock preventing ignition turn off in gear is nuts. Heck, how will the teenagers of tomorrow have the fun of creating engine backfires by doing it while driving?

Killing the engine by turning the ignition back/off will not lock the steering wheel. Removing the key from the ignition might, but many cars these days won't let you do that until you are in Park anyway.

If this jackhole genuinely believe that putting the engine into neutral would flip the car, then his license should be immediately removed. If you can't put a car into neutral while moving, how does he plan to get out of a skid on ice?

I heard the tape of this guy going down the road and he is both a fraud and a bad actor. The statistics are pretty revealing. There have been 10 or more times more incidents of "stuck accelerators" since the first few began to make headlines. The press piles on and the next thing you know this is going on everywhere. Everywhere!! Note the similarity to shark attack stories. Attack! Then you get the pictures of the pods of sharks milling around in the clear waters of south Florida. Then another attack, then.... Hurricane season!!

Dunno 'bout that. More likely they found something that's another belt on their belts-and-suspenders approach to this potential problem. Good for them.

But that don't mean they actually discovered anything at all, other than that it's hard to play on a field that ain't level, and the ref makes extra calls against your side because the ref owns the other team.

Was a "sticking problem" really discovered? Hard to tell from the reports. I know they made a fix for it, but was there really a problem?

Again, it's hard to tell still if anything happened at all. I'd love to read a dispassionate take on it.

But that don't mean they actually discovered anything at all, other than that it's hard to play on a field that ain't level, and the ref makes extra calls against your side because the ref owns the other team.

European and Asian automakers regularly receive billions from their home countries for research and development, and for when times are rough. Most, if not all, also provide free health insurance for their workers, like that new Toyota you just bought. And I bet nobody in those countries trash their own country's brand, and come up with loopy conspiracy theories of tampering with foreign competitors vehicles. So asinine.

Re. the calls for a return to the good old days of cables and mechanical linkages: Horseshit. Hall effect sensors and low-power DC systems like this are more reliable than purely mechanical designs. Hell, they basically are purely mechanical, it's just a strand of electrons being pushed and pulled instead of a steel cable (that can fray and rust and snap and stick).

This story smelled like BS from the outset, and now it absolutely reeks of it. There's nothing wrong with Toyotas. Pedals occasionally stick; deal with it. They stick in 10 year old Chevys and 20 year old Fords, too.

What is "my own country's brand", garage? I'd really like to know, so that I can "buy uhmurrican" next time. Is it the Chevy assembled in Canada, or the Ford assembled in Mexico?

I don't blame Ford for assembling vehicles in Mexico; they have no choice, it's the only way that they can afford to overpay their unionized employees.

Our (proudly non-union) machining facility once had the opportunity to bid on a project for Ford. They wanted us to bend over and allow them to make sweet, sweet love to us on price, so that they could afford to pay their unionized employees $40 per hour to play cards.

I told them to pound sand. We're still open. I'd wager that the machine shop that won that contract isn't. Why would I pay more, when comparing apples to apples, for a product so that the company can overpay their employees, who then turn around and purchase made-in-China junk with their paycheck and vote Obama into office?

I feel more of a kinship to the people who assembled my Honda (here in Ohio) and the people who designed it (in Japan) than I do to the assholes in Detroit making $40 per hour to play cards.

Toyota is no doubt suffering in the court of public opinion. Their perceived lack of concern for their customers will have lasting affects. But Ford Motors comes in 2nd with over 50+ “Sudden Unintended Acceleration” cases. My Pontiac Car had a bad anti lock brake control unit so GM has also had serious recalls this year. I looked on http://www.carpedalrecall.com and found the recall info and local dealership listing; my co Worker had a pedal recall on his ford truck so just look out .

The 911 dispatcher begged Sikes to put the car in neutral, but he steadfastly refused - saying he didn't want to take his hands off the steering-wheel (except, that is, to talk on the phone, and reach down for the gas pedal).

@AJ: My favorite is unwrapping a candy bar, tossing the candy in the trash, left standing there with the wrapper in my hand. I've done this a couple of times. Just not thinking (or, rather, thinking about something else).

Garage: Do you believe the guy in California with the runaway Prius? Yes or no question. Because his thesis is irrefutable and perhaps attractive to you. His thesis is that his Prius has a "ghost" problem that cannot be duplicated and cannot therefore be disproved. If you believe this and if you are representative of the jury pool I am going to buy a GM auto later today and take it for a test drive. If you follow my meaning.

I believe Toyota spent millions of dollars they would have preferred not to spend because obviously there is a problem. Just like Honda announced today they are recalling 410,000 vehicles for braking problems.

Garage: Thanks for the quick yes or no. Very decisive you are. Oh, and I heard that Toyota was on the case and that since the first of the year the number of complaints about the sticking gas pedals have quadrupled. Thank God we have the government helping us out on this. By the way, do you personally believe the guy in California? Do you? Yeah? Nay? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHa

Hah - You do that!?? I'd never throw away good junk food no matter how absent-minded I get. I do, however, forget I ate something good like a candy bar. I'll go ...."_Did I eat all of that already" and then I spy the wrapper in the trash can.

Read thru the comments at the Popular Mechanics link someone had. Best explanation, beside software, was that Toyota designs the pedal control unit different that other cars. There's two circuits that spin the same way, other cars go opposite ways, and it's easy to get a short or maybe be put together missing a washer or such and this would cause the car to accelerate. So this looks like a sensible answer.

There's two circuits that spin the same way, other cars go opposite ways, and it's easy to get a short

You've misread the article. It's very clear that Toyota uses two sensors of different voltage, each with their own isolated ground that are also physically separated. A complete short would cause the car to not work. The professor that claimed to duplicate the problem bridged the two circuits with a 200 ohm resistor; the resistor not only had to be 200 ohms but had to be applied at a specific time when the engine was running.

There is nothing wrong with Toyota's design save for a possible MECHANICAL issue when there was corrosion on the accelerator mechanism. When looked at the overall claims for ALL cars BEFORE this latest hysteria, it wasn't out of the ordinary. (It's also interesting to note that since going to electronic controls, these types of complaints have decreased [by over 80%].)